TradutorOOoNote: OpenOffice.org Google Translate Plugin

TradutorOOoNote is an OpenOffice.org plugin which translates the selected text to the language you select in the OpenOffice status bar and adds the translation as a note to your document. The translation is made using Google Translate, so all the languages available in the online translate tool are also available in OpenOffice (but obviously, you need an internet connection for the plugin to work).


In Ubuntu, to download and install the plugin you can simply paste the following commands in a terminal:

1. Download:

wget http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/e-files/3661/0/TradutorOOoNote.oxt

2. Install:

a) If you use OpenOffice from the official Ubuntu repositories, run the following command:

sudo /usr/lib/openoffice/program/unopkg add TradutorOOoNote.oxt

b) If you have installed OpenOffice.org 3.2 or Go-OO 3.2 from their respective websites, run the following command:

sudo /opt/openoffice.org3/program/unopkg add TradutorOOoNote.oxt

You can also manually download TradutorOOoNote from HERE.

Once you run the above command (only run the one suited for you, of course), you will be asked to accept the terms: type yes and TradutorOOoNote will be installed.


After that, open the OOo Writer and type something in a language different than the language in your OOo statusbar, select the text and then click the floating "Translate" window. The text should be translated and inserted into a note like in the screenshot on the beginning of this post.


Note: please ignore the translation from the above screenshot, Google Translate doesn't handle Romanian very well =)

New Features and a New Look for Google Translate

Google has launched today three new features for it's Translation Service - real time translations, (a really cool feature in my opinion), read and write any language (and a new input transliteration feature for Arabic, Persian or Hindi) and text-to-speech.

All this in a brand new look.

Google Translate offers 51 languages, representing over 98% of Internet users today, and 2.550 language pairs.

But let's talk more about the new features:

- Instant translation - Google Translate now translates your text right as you type.

- Read and write any language - can't read a Chinese text? You can click 'Show romanization' to read the text written phonetically in English. According to the Google Official Blog, it works for all non-Roman languages except for Hebrew, Arabic and Persian. Also, it has a new input transliteration feature for Arabic, Persian or Hindi - if you want to translate from one of these languages, but can't type the script on your keyboard, Google input transliteration feature will allow you to type words as they sound and convert them to native script.

- Text-to-speech - available for when translating into English. You can now also hear translations in spoken form, by clicking the Speaker Icon.

New Ajax Google Translate Widget

Google just announced a new Google Translate widget for blogs which is ajax-based and much prettier than the previous one.

Here is a video with the new Google Translate widget in action:

(I only added the script to make the video, then removed it)

Using this widget, when people visit your page, if their language (as determined by their browser settings) is different than the language of your page, they'll be prompted to automatically translate the page into their own language. If the visitor's language is the same as the language of your page, no translation banner will appear.

Get the new Google Translate widget from HERE (very easy to install, just copy & paste code).

P.s.: if you want to customize it, now you can because the new Google Translate widget doesn't use a frame anymore, so you can use CSS to style it the way you want (just add !important at the end of each CSS statement). You can find the CSS for the widget, HERE.

Inline Translate Extension For Chromium / Google Chrome

Bubble Translate is an extension for Google Chrome / Chromium which you can use to translate text inline. The translated text will then be displayed in a stylish bubble:

Basically, to use this extension, you just have to select the text to translate and click the Toolstrip Icon or by using using your keyboard: Crtl + Select text (this can be change through Bubble Translate settings).

Bubble Translate does what it's supposed to and works like a charm for translating text inside webpages (inline), by using Google Translate with multi-language support. But please note that you need the latest dev build of Chromium / Google Chrome for using this extension.

You could also try Sunday Morning jQuery bookmarklet for a similar effect (works for most browsers), but without installing anything.

Download Bubble Translate | via blogsdna

How To Stop Google From Translating Your Website Or Only Part Of It

Here is a picture of the "Translate this page" option in action:

You can prevent Google to show this "Translate this page" link, by using a simple meta tag in your page <head> tag:

<meta name="google" value="notranslate">

But most importantly, you may want Google Translate to exclude some part of your website such as menus or a portion of text. You can do this as well using class="notranslate" to a div, span or paragraph, like so:

<span class="notranslate">The text you don't want Google to translate goes here</span>

[via blogsdna]